03 October,2025 08:50 AM IST | Mumbai | Ronan Carvalho
Himanshi Tokas (right) with her mother Renu Tokas. PICS/RFYOUTHSPORTS INSTAGRAM
Judoka Himanshi Tokas, 20, is cresting a wave of euphoria having recently ascended to the World No. 1 rank in the 63kg junior category after winning four gold medals this year (Casablanca Junior African Cup, Casablanca African Open, Taipei Junior Asian Cup, and Asian Junior Championships). However, her journey to the top has been far from easy.
Hailing from the village of Munirka in south Delhi, Tokas was encouraged to take up the sport at the age of six by her uncle, who had also played judo at the local level. However, she soon faced her first hurdle in the form of misogynistic comments from neighbours and relatives who would question her family saying things like, "She's a girl. Why are you sending her alone to train? What will she achieve?"
Amidst that storm of discrimination though, three people stood out like lighthouses for Tokas - her mother and her grandmothers (both paternal and maternal).
"There was a time when I felt like I didn't want to continue with judo given all this external noise. But then my maa [mother], daadi and naani [grandmothers] insisted that I continue. I remember when I was nine and other children my age were getting selected for national-level events, everyone said I should quit the sport, but these three stood firmly by my side. My daadi [paternal grandmother] even accompanied me to every single local competition possible. I'm very grateful to them for whatever I've achieved today," Tokas told mid-day recently.
Her next major hurdle came at the age of 15, when she injured her eye while running down a staircase during training. "Some of my family members wanted to bar me from training altogether. They felt that since I'm a girl, if my face is scarred due to any such injury, it would hamper my marriage prospects in future," said Tokas. Again, the ladies in her house supported here strongly, and she re-enrolled her for judo classes and eventually broke through to the national level.
"In 2019, I played my first national competition at the sub-junior level in Manipur, where I won the silver medal in the 48 kg event. I continued to perform well thereafter and by 2020, I was selected to train at the Sports Authority of India's National Centre of Excellence [NCoE] in Bhopal," said Tokas, who balances studying for her Bachelor of Physical Education and Sports degree from Rabindranath Tagore University (Bhopal) with a rigorous six-hour a day training regime that involves running (morning), gym-work (afternoon), and judo practice (evening).
She also credits her NCoE coach Yashpal Solanki for "helping her develop a more effective fighting style and the Reliance Foundation for assisting her "in the psychological side of things and in financial matters as well."
